Skip to main content

Versatile Blogger Award? What?

By
When I woke up this morning....I heard a disturbing sound.  Wait, brain, stop quoting The Blues Brothers.

When I woke up this morning and checked my email I found a very pleasant note that we've been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award  by our fellow-blogger, Amanda Kasper.  Check out her blog about her journey with chronic illness. This is pretty swell and a great way to kick off a weekend.  It's always nice to be recognized for the work we do, so a big thank you to Amanda for nominating us!


Part of being nominated includes us sharing 7 things about ourselves. Since it's Friday, and considering the events still unfolding in our country, I figure a little levity is in order. Here goes nothing:

1. When I was in 1st grade and we were all sitting around our teacher, Miss Zurich, as she read a story to us, I let go a rather loud fart.  Then I tried to play it off like it wasn't me and was incredibly embarrassed.  Miss Zurich gave me a hug and said that everyone toots.  

Indeed, everyone toots and nobody dies.
2. I was a vegetarian for about 17 years, until I became pregnant.  Then I craved cheeseburgers like you wouldn't believe.  I think I ate 2 or 3 a week for 37 weeks.  I should probably get my cholesterol checked.
The ONLY place in Chicago to get a burger.
3. I tend to laugh at inappropriate times.



4. My favorite movie of all time is The Blues Brothers.  I can recite the entire thing from start to finish.  Now there is some useful stuff taking up valuable real estate in my brain.

Do you see the light?
5. While in Munich in 2009, I felt compelled to keep up with a random German in full lederhosen, smoking a crooked cigar, and speaking no English, in beer drinking.  Let's just say the train ride to Frankfurt and flight home the next day were quite unpleasant.  

Now that's skill.
6. When I was growing up, we were the Griswolds.  Driving all over the country, to Mexico and Canada.  All we were missing was a wood-paneled station wagon.  I didn't go on a plane until I was 14.

Why aren't we flying?  Because getting there is half the fun!
7. My favorite quote for life is from the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Wise words and something to live by:

"Only the meek get pinched, the bold survive."
Have a great weekend, everyone!

Best,
Dr. T
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

So You Have IBD During a Pandemic

By
Hey! What's going on? Been pretty boring over here in Chicago. Ok I don't need to elaborate on what the hell is going on in the world. We are being bombarded with information - some accurate, a lot inaccurate - about this pandemic. It's very easy to become completely overwhelmed by it all. We've been forced, pretty damn quickly, to completely overhaul our way of life for the greater good. To reduce the strain on our healthcare system of the sick and dying. And us humans are generally bad with rapid, monumental change that we really don't have a lot of say in. Our little reptilian brains do what they're supposed to do (prime us for fight or flight or freeze) but our advanced "thinking" parts of our brain have to interject with all sorts of unhelpful thoughts, thereby sending some of us off the rails. Before we start, turn off the news. Seriously. In the days following 9-11 we found people who consumed more 24-hour news channel information were mor
Read more

Psychosocial aspects of having an ostomy

By Anonymous
This past Saturday, Tiffany and I had the honor of speaking at the United Ostomy Associations of America's Regional Midwest conference. I was assigned the task of speaking to the patients, and Tiffany addressed the partners or caregivers. I wanted to share with you some of the highlights from my talk. I only had an hour for my session, and with about 100 people in the room, it was not nearly enough time. I love bullet points, so here you go: We are all different! Every ostomate is different and not one size fits all for the emotional/mental aspect either. Who had months to talk about an ostomy and weigh pros/cons? Who was this a more sudden decision for? Who had cancer? Who had IBD? Something else? Who had an ileostomy? colostomy? urostomy? Who has a temporary? Permanent? Multiple temporaries? What age where you when you got your ostomy? Under 20, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60+ Who was single when they got their ostomy? With a serious partner when they had it? Some find a stom
Read more

IBD & Medical Trauma

By
Medical trauma is such an under-recognized issue for the chronnically ill. It's a hard topic to talk about because it can seem like we are pointing fingers at healthcare workers. Maybe that's why there are only, now, 4 studies on the topic in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). If you are someone who treats people with IBD please know I am not here to demonize or criticize. I am both a patient and a GI psychologist. I know the medical system from both sides. I know how messed up and broken it is. But ignoring this or rationalizing it away as only affecting a few folks is wrong. So let's talk about it. Post-traumatic stress (PTS) is the term we use for medical trauma due to technicalities in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-5) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTS can be less severe that full on PTSD, or it can be full on PTSD. Regardless, the symptoms are identical: Feeling hypervigilant/on-edge (increased
Read more